QA Automation Engineer — AI-Native (Playwright)

Our client is a large banking platform based in the US. To support their application growth, we're looking for a QA Automation Engineer with 5+ years of hands-on Playwright experience to drive our test-automation strategy. You'll build and maintain robust, scalable automation and help advance our AI-native quality engineering. What you'll do (primary responsibilities): 1. Own the design and continuous improvement of scalable Playwright automation architecture — reusable fixtures, test utilities, and coding standards. 2. Use AI as a force multiplier for test creation, debugging, migration, test-data generation, documentation, and failure analysis — while staying accountable for test quality and release confidence. 3. Create and maintain high-quality engineering context (requirements, acceptance criteria, test strategies, coding standards, test data, reusable project guidance) so AI tools produce reliable, consistent output. 4. Investigate failures to distinguish product defects, environment issues, data problems, and automation defects; drive root-cause analysis and corrective action. 5. Create detailed, comprehensive, well-structured test plans and test cases; design, implement, and debug tests and define corrective actions. 6. Collaborate with the development team to ensure software meets quality standards; perform thorough regression testing when bugs are resolved. 7. Improve test processes, environments, and scripts; bring a practical approach to complex product testing, especially automation for regression. 8. Stay up to date with new testing tools and strategies. **You're a strong fit if… ** 1. You pick up new knowledge fast and go deep rather than skim. 2. You're resourceful, accountable, and obsessive about detail. 3. You solve problems well independently, with minimal hand-holding. 4. You thrive in a fast-paced environment and can hold multiple projects at once. 5. You communicate clearly with technical teammates and work closely with others to ship. 6. You're AI-native — you already use AI in your daily engineering and know where it helps and where it can't be trusted. **You're probably NOT a fit if… ** 1. You need constant direction, or wait for tickets and specs before acting. 2. You let AI generate tests and sign off without validating intent, coverage, and reliability yourself. 3. You treat QA as box-ticking rather than owning release confidence end-to-end. **Necessary Qualifications: ** 1. Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or equivalent major. 2. Applied knowledge of object-oriented concepts. 3. Understanding of microservices. 4. Basic knowledge of databases (relational/non-relational). 5. Understanding of Scrum and Agile principles. 6. Understanding of SDLC, STLC, and QA methodology. **Required skills (must have applicable work experience, not solely academic): ** 1. 5+ years' proven experience as a QA Automation Engineer, including 5+ years of hands-on experience designing, building, and maintaining production-grade Playwright automation. 2. Advanced Playwright expertise, including Playwright Test, fixtures, resilient locators, page/component objects, parallel execution, trace viewer, network mocking, cross-browser coverage, and test isolation. 3. Strong experience with TypeScript or JavaScript for Playwright automation, and the ability to integrate tests with application, API, and CI/CD workflows. 4. 3+ years with Java and experience with Selenium, TestNG, Cucumber, or comparable automation frameworks. 5. 3+ years of API testing using Postman, Insomnia, REST-assured, or similar tools. **AI-Native Quality Engineering Skills: ** 1. Demonstrated hands-on use of AI coding assistants or engineering agents (such as Kiro, Claude, GitHub Copilot, or Cursor) for test design, implementation, debugging, refactoring, test-data creation, documentation, and analysis. 2. Ability to translate requirements into clear specifications, acceptance criteria, risk-based test strategies, and testable scenarios understandable to both engineers and AI tools. 3. Experience with AI-assisted and agentic quality engineering, including context management, reusable project guidance/steering files, spec-driven development, and parallel work in isolated branches or environments. 4. Strong judgment when reviewing AI-generated tests: validate test intent, assertions, critical-path coverage, maintainability, data handling, duplicate coverage, flaky behavior, and false confidence. **Preferred Skills: ** 1. Experience using AI to generate or migrate automated tests, including validating generated tests against requirements and maintaining traceability from requirements to test coverage. 2. Familiarity with AI output evaluation, observability, structured validation, and bounded agentic workflows with human review and escalation. 3. Proficiency in root-cause analysis and the ability to propose viable solutions. 4. Working knowledge of Azure/AWS, Active Directory, web server (IIS), SQL, and API. 5. Effective communication skills; excellent attention to detail; analytical, problem-solving aptitude. 6. Ability to work independently and as a team; self-starter.